Andrew,

My wife and I just returned from spending a week fishing on the chain and we no problems with navigating the channels. The channels between Chain and Echo and the one between Echo and Stone are a little shallow but you will be fine if you trim up your motor and take it slow on your first pass through until you are familiar with them. There were boats of all sizes navigating all of the channels, pontoons, bass boats, ski boats etc. The majority of the channel bottoms are sand/muck with the occasional log laying on the bottom. Watch yourself going around the sharp bend after you go under the County D bridge as it gets a little shallow there. You should be able to chase up a few muskies. We had numerous fish bite us off while we were fishing for crappies. The muskies and northerns were very active on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Saturday afternoon we boated 19 northern and lost a couple of decent size muskies. All fish were caught on either a chartruese or black 1/4 oz. spinnerbait with a large silver willow leaf blade. Biggest fish that we saw was in the low to mid 40's. It hit a 2" twister tail with a jig spinner about 4 feet from the boat. Go figure. There's also a nice landing on Stone Lake but the only problem is that it's a little out of the way to actually get there.

Good Luck!